Bill Gates launches $1 billion breakthrough energy fund

U.S., Dec. 15 -- The new fund is called Breakthrough Energy Ventures (BEV) has been launched to invest in clean energy technologies. Bill Gates has joined forces with 20 other investors, including Silicon Valley venture capitalists John Doerr and Vinod Khosla, former hedge manager John Arnold, Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos, Bloomberg LP founder and former New York City mayor Mike Bloomberg and Alibaba founder Jack Ma.
The Breakthrough Energy Coalition behind the fund are willing to wait longer than they might have to on other ventures. They're calling this a 20-year fund due to the nature of the energy industry.
Bill Gates said in a recent blog post: "When it comes to energy, though, this transition-from idea to product to company-is often complicated by the challenges of the market. Unlike a software start up, getting a new energy technology from a lab to market takes a lot of infrastructure, a lot of upfront capital, and a lot of time.
"The Breakthrough Energy Coalition created BEV to address some of those challenges in the energy market. We are willing to wait a longer time for returns than other funds. We have a higher tolerance for technical risk, because we know it's tough to determine which technologies will succeed in a complicated energy market. We are led by our investors, who are a unique group of global business leaders, entrepreneurs, energy experts, and company builders who can help new companies navigate the challenges of building a business while developing partnerships with the companies and institutional investors who will help bring those products to scale."
One of the most well know clean energy companies with Tesla, which has a huge market share across electric vehicles, energy storage and now solar energy too. The people behind BEV want to invest in something that will grow to this kind of scale with a similar impact but in a different sector.
BEV is aware that we use energy in a different way and soon enough there will be parts of the world that have never had this kind of energy before. This means that the old energy sources that have served us so well may no longer be viable, especially if we want to control global warming and protect the plant for future generations.